


A Big, Big Mess

by mercurybard



Series: Mess [1]
Category: 504 Plan, Bandom, Empires (Band), Fall Out Boy, Hush Sound, Panic! at the Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: A Little Less Sixteen Candles A Little More "Touch Me" (Video), Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Car Accidents, Community: occhallenge, F/M, Homelessness, Recreational Drug Use, References to Depression, Unhealthy Relationships, Warped Tour 2005, Warped Tour 2008, inability to keep a drummer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 06:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 6,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11526387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: The Academy Is... tears itself apart in Florida leaving AJ LaTrace floundering around for a new band and a bandage for her heart.





	1. Slow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dragonsinger77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonsinger77/gifts).



> Written for occhallenge where you create a completely original character or gender flip an existing one. I chose to change TAI's original lead guitarist, AJ LaTrace, to a girl and just ran with it.

_~2004~  
I'm not saying that I'm not breaking some hearts tonight, girl_

Their writing process is a fucked up thing. Adrian knows this; Bill knows this; Mike knows this. It involves a lot of screaming at one another and occasionally throwing things. Hell, Pete magically appeared on the studio doorstep that morning to spend the day “watching them be the little musical geniuses he’d sworn to the label they were” and bailed after only three hours because he couldn’t stand the tension that vibrated between the three of them.

“You know the showdown at high noon in Westerns? Being in the studio with the three of you makes me feel like I’m standing in the middle of one of those…naked,” he said. 

“Everything ends in naked with you,” Adrian said. She had her guitar in her lap, just noodling around with a couple of strands of melody that didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of the album. Everything these days revolved around the album. She was starting to hate Florida because of it. And, come on, it was Florida. She’d wanted to come here and see Mickey Mouse since she was three. Now, she was here, and Florida was just hot and humid—the kind of sticky that made her shirts cling to her back within minutes of stepping outside. Not to mention the mosquitoes. And she still hadn’t seen Mickey.

Pete stared at her like he’d just realized she was wearing a name tag that said ‘Hello, My Name Is bitch’, even though she’d had it on since breakfast (dry cereal and a Diet Pepsi, and it had been Adam who’d slapped the tag on her in retribution for a particularly shitty two a.m. session in the studio last night). “You’re insane to keep doing this to yourself.”

“You want a record out of us just as much as anyone.” Also true—Pete had put a hell of a lot of himself on the line when he talked Fueled By Ramen into signing them. The callous on one of her fingers caught on a string, and they both winced at the discordant sound. 

“I don’t think I could do it. Yeah, Patrick and I fight when we’re writing, but not like what you guys do to each other. Nothing like that.”

Adrian closed her eyes against the memory of Carden flipping out—screaming obscenities at her until Adrian roared back that if he was so goddamn sure that the song was supposed to sound like what he had in mind, then he could take lead and she’d play the fucking rhythm part. Bill—who hated conflict when he wasn’t one of the active parties—had shrunk into the corner and let Sisky make all the tentative efforts to calm them down. Maybe she had screamed at Adam too. That part she wasn’t ready to admit to herself yet. “It’s just the way we work.” Her eyes, when she looked up at him, felt bruised.

“How much longer can you keep working like this?” Pete asked, sincere in his concern.

Adrian snorted. “However long I have to.”


	2. Hear

__

_~2004~  
so take a chance and make it big_

“Are we seriously sneaking into a high school talent show?” Jon asked after he finished falling over the fence blocking the theater’s loading dock off from the parking lot. Shoe. He was missing a shoe. Flipflop, if you wanted to be specific.

Adrian thwapped him on the head. Oh, so that’s where the missing piece of footwear had gone. “Yes, we’re seriously sneaking in, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve got better things to do with ten bucks than support the booster club.”

Five or six bands were milling around the loading dock, waiting for their turn to take the stage in between the drill team’s routine and the amateur fan dancers. Jon nodded to someone he thought he recognized from 5o4 Plan shows and tagged after Adrian as she hopped up onto the dock and slipped backstage. Hadn’t he just escaped high school? And now he was sneaking back in, on a ‘covert’ mission, no less.

Adrian drew up short, and Jon plowed into her back. “Perfect,” she muttered. A hand snaked around and latched onto the front of Jon’s t-shirt, bodily hauling him around in front of her. She was just tall enough to hook her chin over his shoulder. Adrian wrapped her arms around him, drawing him back against her until her oversized belt buckle dug into the small of his back. “Now, we find ourselves a band.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to poach some high school band,” he muttered as the drill team filed off past them. One of the girls gave him an appraising look, then sniffed when she saw Adrian. 

He felt Adrian stiffen behind him for a second, until the drill teamers had passed. “Not much choice,” she hissed back, right in his ear. “I’m persona non grata on the scene right now, so it’s either high school kids or going outside of Chicago. And I like Chicago.”

“Pete still mad at you?”

“Last time I talked to him, he said if I left Florida, he was disowning me. He might have quoted Mulan.”

Jon twisted his neck around until he could almost look her in the eye. Well, the darkish blob under her fringe of bangs in his peripheral vision might have been an eye. “Mulan?”

“You know—‘Dishonor! Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow…’.”

“When was this?”

“Um…the night before I left Tampa?”

Jon banged his head back against her shoulder. Twice. “Do you even have a phone?”

Adrian didn’t answer. Lucky for her, the band that had been setting up in the wake of the drill team chose that moment to launch into an off-tempo rendition of “Ants Marching”. He had to suffer through an equally bad cover of “Crash Into Me” before there was a chance of him being heard. “Adrian?”

“Absolutely no Dave Matthews. Or Red Hot Chili Peppers,” she muttered absently. 

Jon sighed and stomped on her foot. Since he was wearing flipflops, and she had on combat boots, it wasn’t enough to hurt her. Just remind her that she couldn’t dance around the question with him. Not for the first time, he wondered how Tom was really faring when it came to dealing with her ex. 

“I’ve been living in my truck,” she admitted, almost so quietly he couldn’t hear her over the band tearing down. She turned her face downwards, burying it in the meat of his shoulder. 

Huh. Maybe he should’ve realized that earlier. Realized that she always smelled like she’s just rolled out of a tour van. Realized that the wrists locked over his heart were thinner than he remembered from before she went down to Florida. “And you haven’t talked to Pete since before you left?”

“Nope.”

Jon didn’t know Pete the way Adrian did: Pete, who was a friend of Nick’s—Pete Wentz from Arma and Racetraitor—but he knew Pete said a lot of things he later regretted. He also knew Adrian was a stubborn-ass bitch who would take Pete at his word and destroy… 

He actually had no idea just what the stakes were. The Academy Is…, Bill-and-Adrian—it was a puzzle that he and Tom were just starting to piece together during late-night phone calls when Tom’s fingers were too ragged to keep learning the new material. Adrian, though, she stood to lose the most. Which was why they were stalking baby bands at a high school talent show. 

Jon wrapped one hand around her bird-bone wrists and reached back with the other to grab hold of a chunk of greasy hair at the back of her head, effectively pinning her to his back. She stiffened, and he wondered how close he was to getting his knees kicked out from under him. “LaTrace, if you don’t go call Pete, I swear to God I’ll quit this fucking band before it even gets off the ground.”

It took her a long moment to answer, Jon’s fingers digging into her skin and scalp. “Fine…but I’m watching this band first.”

Reluctantly, he let her go, expecting her to move out of his bubble. But, she stayed right where she was, draped over him like a throw over the back of a couch with her face pressed against the side of his neck.

The band in question was actually an acoustic duo—a red-haired boy with acne and a guitar and a girl with waves of blond curls and a battered keyboard. Their sound was way out in left field compared to the band that had played before, but they were good. 

And something about them caught Adrian’s attention. Her fingers started picking out a guitar part on Jon’s forearm. Not quite what the redhead was playing, but close. More complex and definitely Adrian-esque. Her hip started twitching in time to the beat, and soon they were both swaying slightly in the wings. He could feel her smiling against his neck.

“Da-dadada…in the nightlight,” she sang under her breath. The words vibrated across the skin near his throat. “Not Academy. Not by a long shot.”

Suddenly, Jon could almost hear it—the music in Adrian’s head blended together with the infectious melody played by the duo on stage—and for the first time, maybe, since she’d crawled in his bedroom window and proposed they start a band, he thought that it might just work.


	3. Fast

_~2005~  
we've got one chance to break out / and we need it now_

Adrian's still trying to figure out who sucked whose dick to get Prototype Armada included in the Warped '05 line up as the van is pulling into the first venue right behind Fall Out Boy's bus. When her eyes cut over to Bob, sitting in the passenger seat where he's been maintaining tyrannical control over the CD player, he just shakes his head. "Wasn't me, AJ."

"And it wasn't me, and we all sure as hell know it wasn't Greta," Adrian says, looking back at the rest of her band in the rearview. 

Greta's sprawled across the middle bench, her head in Jon's lap and her feet propped up on the side door, and has her earbuds in. "'Wasn't Greta' what?" she asks as she pulls out the left one.

"You're not the one who sucks dick to get us gigs," AJ explains. A buff guy with massively gauged ears and a ratty Bouncing Souls t-shirt directs her towards the back of the concrete wasteland that's going to be their home for the night. She'd gone out to visit Joe and Pete last year during their brief nine-day stint and remembered thinking that all the venues blended together into one long day of humidity and dust and watered down Gatorade. 

Bob turns around in his seat until he's got his chin propped on the top of the headrest and his ass pressed against the dash. "Yeah, it's too dangerous--you might bite it off."

AJ glances back again, meeting Greta's eyes in the mirror. "Should I hit him? I think I can dead-leg him from here."

A small smirk twisted Greta's oh-so-innocent looking mouth. "No, I'll get him later."

"So if it's not me and it's not AJ or Greta, that just leaves Roth and Jon."

Jon's asleep, one hand tangled in Greta's curls, with headphones clamped firmly over his ears.

"Jon," all four of his bandmates shout right as AJ brings the van to a halt in the shadow of the buses.


	4. Kick

_~2006~  
I'm on my feet (This isn't like us anyway.)_

“So what are your thoughts on plaid pants?” Pete asked as soon as she picked up.

“No, Pete, I’m not modeling for you,” Adrian shot back.

“No, no, it’s for the next Fall Out Boy video.”

***

Pete, apparently, wanted her to play the leader of the Punks, a vampire gang made up of stuntmen and extras. Hence, the plaid pants. Adrian was glad she’d been forewarned, so she remembered to bring her big, black stompy boots when she flew out to LA.

What he hadn’t bothered to mention was that Bill and Carden were playing the leaders of a rival vampire gang, the Dandies. 

“Pete…” she growled when she caught a glimpse of them going into the costume trailer.

The bassist twitched. “Did you know your canines are already pretty pointy—maybe we won’t need to fit you with fangs?”

Adrian fixed him with her best death glare. “Pete.”

He sighed. “Don’t you think it’s time to stop this stupid feud? You are the one who left.”

“They drove me out,” Adrian snapped automatically.

“And now you have your band, which—by the way—features one Jon Walker on bass. Who is JWalk’s best friend? Tom Conrad, who took your place when you left The Academy Is…”

“Technically, he replaced Carden, who replaced me.”

“AJ,” Pete scolded, speaking slowly and with swoopy hand gestures, “Think of Tom and Jon as children of a divorce. They love each other very much, they want to talk to each other and spend time together…”

He really was a new level of ridiculous, she thought, looking down at him. “Jon’s perfectly welcome to hang out with whoever the hell he wants.”

“Except you make rabid wolverine noises every time he mentions Tom.”

“Did Jon really describe them as ‘rabid wolverine noises’, or are you taking poetic license with my bassist’s words, Peter Wentz?”

“LaTrace, I’ve known you since you were a wee fourteen-year-old with a tragic haircut and orange Chucks—he didn’t have to. Now, go find the stunt coordinator so he can teach you to kick ass.”

“Like I need a stuntman to teach me that.”

***

The stunt coordinator raised an eyebrow when she walked out onto the patio where they were choreographing the fights. Adrian just rolled up the sleeves of her hoodie.

Unsurprisingly, Pete had the most physically demanding role—including wirework while playing his bass—but Joe was right there with him. There seemed to be some argument going on between the two that consisted mostly of constipated-looking angry faces and pointedly arched eyebrows. Part of Adrian wanted to boot Pete in his derriere just on principle; part of her knew that Joe was going to lose whatever argument simply because Pete was Pete and he got his way about everything, except with Patrick. Like her, Joe had been part of the Pete Wentz Experience since practically junior high—another hanger-on with a tragic haircut. 

The difference lay, she decided as she worked on throwing a punch movie-style (a punch on camera went backwards of reality—the victim had all the control), in who owed who more. She was going to be forever in Wentz’s debt over TAI, to say nothing about Armada. On the other hand, there wouldn’t be a Fall Out Boy if it weren’t for Joe, and Pete would just be another screamo scene kid (if a legendary one).

“So who are you rollin’ with?” the coordinator asked when he finally came over to her.

“Our girl, AJ, is the leader of the so-called Punks,” Joe said, slinging an arm across her shoulders. “Fitting since, you know, punk’s dead.”

“Undead,” she corrected. Her mouth was dry, and she felt her chapped lips stick to her teeth as she peeled them back in her best feral smile. She’d practiced it in the airplane’s tiny bathroom. Maybe Pete was right—maybe she didn’t need fake fangs.

***

Adrian was sitting on top of the police car Pete would be hauled off in at the end of the video when Mike finally found her. The roof already sported elbow dents from Pete and William filming a scene where Pete pounced and William used vampire hoodoo to disappear. “So it occurred to me that Brendon isn’t very straight in real life,” he said by way of greeting as he settled on the hood of the squad car.

Across the lot, the Panic! at the Disco vocalist was filming his big moment—mesmerizing a flock of pretty young things. He’d sunk himself so deep into the role that Adrian barely recognized him. The goofball managed to transform himself into a bowler-wearing predator camouflaged in nineteenth century frippery. “There might be an acting career when his band goes VH1 special,” she said, not looking at Carden. She had her fangs in and kept pressing her tongue against the pointy tip of one plastic canine. If it were real, she’d slice her tongue open. “Bet Bill’s enjoying being the villain.”

“Not fair, AJ.”

She winced. “I didn’t mean it like that…I just meant that I remember how much he used to like mocking the cheesy horror film villains. And now he gets to play one.” She flicked her tongue against her other tooth. It was a little loose, and she could taste the bitter glue holding it on. “I suck at this ex-girlfriend stuff.”

“You sucked pretty hard at the pre-ex-girlfriend stuff too,” Mike muttered. He didn’t sound like he was condemning her—just stating a fact. And it was a fact.

Another fact: “William’s not the world’s best boyfriend.”

Carden snorted and leaned back on his hands. In off-white and fur lapels, he looked fucking ridiculous. He belonged in ragged denim shorts, Adrian decided, and flipflops he could kick off mid-set. Out of all the guys on their label, Mike was the least dandy-ish. “Well, his pain makes our music, and I’m not the one who dated him, so… Yeah.”

AJ flopped backwards and rolled her head to look down at him. “Is this your way of apologizing?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I’m still not forgiving you for locking me in the broom closet.”

“Well, good, because I’m still not forgiving you for writing our first single while locked in the broom closet.”


	5. Green

_~2007~  
with your automatic eyes, five years disappeared_

Prototype Armada's first album was a six-track EP called _Angry Girl_ recorded in a makeshift basement studio, Bob and Greta huddling under an old, wool Army blanket to records their vocals. (It was the third and last album recorded by Pen Rat Studios...the owner's mother shut it down after Prototype finished because of noise complaints from the neighbors.)

Years later, when hipster critics went out of their way to bash the latest album, the over-played _Deb's Daisy Razor_ , they would lavish praise on Angry Girl track "Weeping Willow" and its experimental guitar sound.

(Bob had caught a stomach bug and couldn't be moved more than six inches from the toilet. Jon and the kid who owned Pen Rat ran the cables to the upstairs bathroom so Bob could record his parts and vomit when necessary. One of the cables had been chewed on by...something--"not a mutant roach of incredible size and strength, Greta, really now"--resulting in the signature distortion.)

The first ninety-six copies of _Angry Girl_ were burned on Jon Walker's home computer. In 2007, right before the release of _Deb's Daisy Razor_ , Julia Raymundo (a.k.a. JReelz87) instigated a search for any surviving originals in existence. Surprisingly, thirty-seven people sent in pictures of their CDs, the name of the band and album handwritten on them in green Sharpie by the four founding members of Prototype.

(It took almost a year before the confusion over whether the band's name was Prototype Armada or Angry Girl was resolved. Bob still sometimes announces them as "We're the band not called 'Angry Girl'.)


	6. Change

_~2007~  
your eyes wide, always ahead of the curve type_

"This band and drummers...think _This Is Spinal Tap_. Not that any of the drummers have died," McLynn added quickly. "They just go through them like socks."

Kevin knew that much--he'd looked at the band's Myspace before getting on a plane to Chicago. All he'd known previously was that Prototype Armada had a reputation as 'emo'. Listening to the samples on their page, he'd revised that to 'schizophrenic folk rock with an occasional descent into soaring guitar and creepiness'. 

Their page had been kind of sparse, honestly. Most of the pictures in the photo album were artsy shots taken on tour by the bassist. In the corner of the profile that listed the members, on the line for the drummer, it just said ' _someone. anyone. you know a good one?_ '

Which was why he was here, in an upscale motel, meeting with the band's manager. "We thought we'd found a good match last summer, but he's still in high school and can't tour when class is in session. Damn shame too--the kid's something of a prodigy," Bob continued. "Maybe when he graduates..."

Kevin shifted uneasily in his chair. "So this is just temporary?"

The manager rubbed a hand over his smooth-shaven head. "At this point, I can't promise anything. You play with them for maybe six months? Make it through Warped Tour, at least, and then we'll talk." He glanced down at the open laptop in front of him for a moment before looking Kevin straight in the eye. "You still interested?"

As much as Kevin wanted to be part of a band again, he wanted to be out on the road more. Three years as a studio musician had done nice things to his bank account, but he'd spent the last year and a half of them feeling an itch between his shoulder blades that wouldn't go away no matter how much it was scratched. "I want to play in front of live audiences again," he told the manager. "End of story."

"Well, you'll certainly get to do that."

***

McLynn gave him a scrap of paper with an address scribbled on it. Instead of being put up in a hotel until the tour--something with the dubious name of "The Really, Really Ridiculously Good-Looking Tour" that started in Poughkeepsie and ended in Farmingdale--began, he was going to stay in Prototype Armada's guitarist's spare room. "Learn to live with Adrian now," Bob had warned him, "Before you're trapped on a bus for months."

Now, Kevin was standing on the landing outside a moderately-priced apartment. He could hear an acoustic guitar faintly through the door and wondered if he needed to knock again. Before he could, however, the door opened, revealing a short, barefoot young man holding a sandwich in one hand and a beer in the other. "Hey," he said laconically, gesturing to Kevin with the bottle. Then, he turned his head and yelled, "LaTrace, there's a dude with a walrus mustache at the door!"

Kevin's hand came up automatically to stroke at his facial hair. He'd grown it for a music video (he still didn't know why Curtis and Erik had insisted he drum for the cameras) and liked it so much that he kept it. 

"No offense--the mustache is awesome." Barefoot Beer Boy was possibly a little stoned.

"None taken. I'm Kevin...the new fill-in drummer for Prototype Armada."

"Jon Walker, bassist." He stepped back and shooed Kevin in with a wave of the sandwich. "LaTrace, walrus-dude's our new drummer. Come out and say hi!" He stepped over a trash bag that was just sitting in the middle of the entryway, seemingly oblivious to the stench wafting up from it.

The guitar stopped, and a second later, a door banged open hard enough to rattle the wall next to Kevin.

Adrian LaTrace, lead guitarist of and (if Bob McLynn could be believed) driving force behind Prototype Armada, was an underfed, fairly tall redhead who didn't seemed to be perturbed by the fact that she was only dressed in a shapeless, faded Metallica t-shirt and ratty lime green panties when there was a strange dude in her apartment. Jon didn't seem too bothered by it either, though he did point out, "You lack pants."

Adrian pinched the bridge of her nose. She had days' old eyeliner ringing her eyes like a raccoon's. Kevin wondered when she'd last slept. "I was going to bed after I get this song out!" This last came out as a feral snarl, like a song was prey to be stalked and possibly beaten into submission.

"Armada, Academy, or other?" Jon asked.

She made a face of disgust. "Not sure--that's why I want it out."

"'Academy'?" Kevin hoped he didn't look as confused as he felt.

"The Academy Is...--I'm technically still a member, and they're going back into the studio after Christmas to write songs for the third album while we're out touring, so I want as many of my contributions handed over before then." She turned to Jon. "I need to get together with Mike and Bill and hash out "The Dishwasher Song".

Jon grabbed her shoulders (beer bottle digging into her left shoulder blade and the sandwich smashing against the right so a bit of mayo squirted out onto her shirt) and spun her around. "You need to sleep." He shoved her--not hard, but she staggered anyway. "Sleep, I command you."

"Who're you to command me, Jonny Walker?" But she disappeared back down the hall anyway.

"Your bassist!"

"'The Dishwasher Song'?" Kevin asked as soon as they heard the door slam. Not for the first time since knocking on the apartment door, he wondered if this was going to be the right band for him, or if this was going to turn into another heartbreak.

"It popped into her head while she was loading the dishwasher. Don't worry--Bill'll rename it before the album drops."


	7. Purple

_2008  
hold the phone, we've found an answer_

Steve from SURS dubs her ‘No Pants Girl’, which is funny because Adrian actually wore her new jeans for Prototype Armada’s appearance on his show. (The ones with the handprint in red nail polish on the ass and the left knee busted out, not the ones that are more holes than fabric that she’s had since high school.)

Adrian—being Adrian—climbs up on the couch and drops trou in front of Steve, her band, and a live studio audience. The stretched out ‘Illinois is for Lovers’ shirt does little to hide her purple bikini underwear.

Kevin, the new guy, gapes. Greta rolls her eyes. Bob’s skin flushes to match his hair.

“Nice…uh, panties,” Steve says once the whistling and hooting from the audience dies down.

Adrian hops down, resettling herself between Jon and Greta. The jeans lay in a crumpled pile in the middle of the stage floor where she’d kicked them. “Thanks. They’ve got a polar bear on them.”

“Indeed they do,” Steve confirms for the live studio audience who can’t see the decal from this distance. The cameraman zooms in on her crotch for the folks at home. “Now, tell us about the new album…”


	8. Hurt

__

_2007  
when you're screaming "Danger, Danger!", don't stop, go on alone_

Adrian's at the wheel when Armor For Sleep's trailer comes unhitched. They had started out the tour with a bus, but it had broken down on Day #2. Luckily, they'd been close enough that she and Bob had been able to fly back, pick up the van, and drive to where the bus had died to collect the trailer before racing to the next stop on tour. They'd shown up at the venue too late to do a soundcheck, and Adrian had spent the entire show unable to hear anything but the drums in her monitor. They'd still performed okay, and there had been Armada fans in the crowd, singing along to their songs.

So, it's late and cold and Jon's snoozing in the passenger seat next to her (the rest of the band is bunking in with TAI since there's no reason to cram in the heatless van unless they absolutely have to) when the Academy's bus suddenly swerves, and out of nowhere, there's a trailer coming right at her.

To her left, there's a semi paralleling her, so she's forced to veer right. The shoulder isn't even a car's width, and she flinches as metal squeals against metal--the side panels of the van scraping along the barricade. Outwardly...well, she's probably cussing, but she's too busy trying to keep the behemoth van and its trailer under control to stop and take note.

Beside her, Jon's awake now, and he's screaming, but it's forgivable because he's got zero control of the situation. Not that Adrian's got a whole hell of a lot more.

Armor For Sleep's trailer slams into the front fender of the van, the shock reverberating up through Adrian's hands where they are clenched around the steering wheel and shaking her to the core. The hit jackknifes the trailer as the back right corner is shoved into the guardrail. They are totally, totally fucked, she thinks as the runaway trailer hits the driver's side and throws her hard against the seat belt.

***

Things are blank after that. The doctors in the ER explain that her mind wiped most of her memories of the accident to protect her from shock. The next thing she remembers is lying on a gurney in an ER overflowing with flu patients and heart attack victims, Bill and Sisky hovering over her. She's got whiplash, of course, as well as a sprained elbow (what the fuck?) and cuts on the back of her scalp from where her plastic hair clip shattered against the headrest. Not to mention an impressive set of bruises.

Greta's in the corner with her Sidekick pressed against her ear. Doesn't matter, Adrian can still hear Pete panicking on the other end. "Gimme that," she rasps as she forces herself to sit up. William starts to protest, but she silences him with a glare. (God, how horrible must she look for that to actually work?) Greta just hands the phone over without argument.

Pete's babbling a million miles a minute in a language she wouldn't think was English, except she knows he's not bilingual. 

"Pete."

Surprisingly, that shuts him up.

"Pete, I'm fine."

"Greta said the driver's side was completely smashed in. They had to fucking cut you out! You are not 'fine'."

Adrian moves the phone about a foot away from her ear and sighs. "Has anyone called Aunt Ellen?"

Adam and Greta exchange a look behind Bill's back as he replies, "We thought the two of you weren't speaking."

Suddenly, all the pain, all the fatigue that the drugs had been tamping down swells up right behind her forehead. Adrian lets herself drop back against the pillow. "Moira watches TAI TV and reads the boards. I don't want her worrying." She regards the Sidekick--Pete's voice still issuing from it at high volume--for a minute before hitting 'End'. Calling Aunt Ellen at fuck-knows-what-o'clock in the morning to say 'I'm not dead'... "Can I get some privacy, guys?"


	9. Fly

__

_~2008~  
(please stay tuned for what happened next...)_

"Don't get me wrong," Kevin said as he and Jon bumped fists. "You guys are great."

He came around to give AJ a hug, and it was an awkward, one-armed thing. The doctor had given her strict instructions to wear a sling whenever she wasn't performing. Greta enforced them with frightening ferocity. "Your music is awesome," he said, mostly into her hair. His whiskers tickled the shell of her ear.

"But..." and he moved over to Greta, pausing to press a kiss to her forehead, "You like doing everything the hard way, and I'm getting too damn old for that shit."

"Yes," Greta snarked, "Because you're positively ancient."

"Best of luck, kids. I can't wait to hear to the next album. Just please don't die making it." And then he shouldered his duffel and disappeared into the airport crush.

AJ sighed and pointedly did not look at her phone. Particularly her last text from Pete:

_you lose your drummer, im not buying you a new one_


	10. Drink

_~2008~  
the life that I've chosen to live will take your heart and swallow it_

“Jonny Walker, you smell like pot,” Adrian said as she burrowed down between him and the back of the couch. She’d found him watching _The OC_ and decided he looked too comfy not to cuddle with.

“And you, Ms. LaTrace, are drunk.”

She made a happy noise into his shoulder and twisted around until the couch had no choice but to accept her bony frame.

Jon pulled one of her arms across his chest and burrowed backwards into her (he really was the best ever to snuggle with…like a giant teddy bear that smelled like weed and that ‘Amber’ stuff from Bath & Body Works). “Is this happy drunk or throw-my-phone-in-the-pool drunk?”

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Bill wrote a song about it, so I’m going to go with ‘no’.”

“Damn him.”

On the TV, Marissa Cooper freaked out and threw lawn furniture in the pool. Shit, Adrian was a cliché. She didn’t want to be a cliché—she wanted to be a rocker. Just wanted to play her guitar and and sing and write music. That was the biggie—writing the music. Adrian doubted she couldn’t not write. Maybe if her hand got chopped off or something, she could give up the guitar, but the actual writing of songs, no way in hell. It was a force of its own: words and chords beating incessantly against her mind like waves worrying at the ocean shore. Come to think of it, that was nice metaphor…

“Hey,” Jon said, rolling over so he could press his nose to the side of her head and whisper into the hair just above her ear. She hadn’t bathed in two days, so that couldn’t smell very good, but Jon had practically grown up in a tour van, same as her. His nose had probably shut down years ago in self-defense. “Hey, I was just making sure you were okay. I didn’t mean to kill the happy.”

“Just thinking.”

“No better way to kill a happy than to think too much.”

“Even when you’re thinking about good stuff?”

“For you? Especially then.”

“I was thinking about writing music,” she protested.

“AJ, have you ever listened to your songs? Nine times out of ten, they’re about somebody wanting something they can’t have.”

She…didn’t know what to say to that. Jon—his bombshell dropped—turned his attention back to the muted TV, and she squished in closer. Because even if she was making Bob or Greta sing about being creepers hiding under beds or recording stupid ditties about not being able to pee standing up, she did tend to write about things out of reach. Was she that dissatisfied with what she had?

The episode ended, and Jon dug around under her thigh for the remote. “Stop thinking, LaTrace.”


	11. Blue

_~2008~  
(To be loved, to be loved, everyone wants)_

The answer is so fucking simple that Adrian wants to bang her head against the wall when they finally figure it out—Greta can play drums. More than that, Greta’s damn good at the drums. She actually recorded half the drum parts on _Deb’s Daisy Razor_ after Greg walked on them.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Adrian asks as she watches Greta tweak the drum kit’s set up. “Us taking you away from your piano?”

Greta adjusts the high hat and then sits back on the throne, hands resting on her bare knees. She seems to have settled on black shorts, nylons with seams up the backs and perky sailor tops as her stage outfit for this tour. Adrian’s stuck with bootie shorts (turquoise blue ones bought on Warped Tour from Greeley Estes), her big black boots, and whatever t-shirt she happens to find on the bus floor that day. There are days when she thinks she’ll never be truly cold again, but there’s only a couple of more weeks until it’s officially autumn, and by then, they’ll be back in Chicago. 

“AJ, I’d be more upset about this band going under because we don’t have a drummer. We both saw _Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist_—a band’s got to have a drummer.” She fiddles with the sticks in their little bag, placed so they’d be right at hand in case she broke one mid-set. "I think we can rework the songs so we can drop the piano on most of them, and then for the ones that have to have it, we can play acoustic."


	12. See

_~2008~  
so who's selfish and who's sorry?_

Moira finds the picture and emails it to her one night when they’re out on the road. Adrian doesn’t get it until after the show. She’s mooching a wireless signal off of one of the venue’s neighbors to bum around on MySpace while the others shower.

It’s of Mike.

***

_"I swear to fucking God, if you don’t shut up and write, I will personally kick your ass all the way back to Chicago.”_

_Okay, maybe she’s had that one coming, the way she’s been snapping at William all day. But he’s been playing the passive-aggressive game since breakfast, and she’s sick of it. Every disputed bridge, every chord that needs tightening in the chorus, every badly chosen word in the verse has became a battleground._

_“Mike’s right, Adrian. We need to focus on what’s really important here,” Bill says, and Adrian doesn’t even realize she’s put her guitar down until she’s on her feet, both hands clenched into fists at her sides._

***

Carden. (Way too many Mikes in her life for her not to have to add the last name even when she’s just inside her head.)

***

_“That’s it!” Mike’s got her by the arm and her acoustic in his other hand, and he’s hustling her across the room to the supply closet. “I’m not going to let you two’s drama ruin this record,” he tells her as he shoves her in hard enough that she ricochets off the shelf loaded down with a broken amp and rolls of toilet paper. Shoving the guitar into her arms, he steps back. “I’m locking you in, and I’m not letting you out until you’ve written a goddamn song.”_

***

Standing in front of a glowing TAI sign, guitar slung across his torso, one hand on the fret. He’s staring right into the camera like he can see her looking at him from half a continent away. Not smiling, of course, because it’s Mike, and someone’s taking his picture.

***

_Later, Adrian learns he shut William in the bathroom—the tiny, nasty bathroom that always smells like boiled cabbage for no reason they can discern—and wouldn’t let him out until he’s got a song done as well._

_“’Would you believe me if I said I didn’t need you, ‘cause I wouldn’t believe you if you said the same to me’,” Bill sings, looking out of the recording booth at her with hooded eyes. Adrian feels like bolting. Either into the booth to smash his stupid face in, or out of the building to get away from him and all the charm he still oozes even when they’re falling apart._

_“’When I’m gone, you’ll be going nowhere fast’.”_

_Mike’s hands on her shoulders are the only thing keeping her there._

***

For the first time in months, Adrian feels like she could cry (stupid, fucking medication). But it would be a good cry, she thinks as she enlarges the picture, because he looks so fucking at peace. And he, of all people, deserves it. 


	13. Loose

_~2008~  
I'm going to ask you a series of questions,  
And I want them answered on the spot, right now._

The Chicago scene was incestuous. Two days after they put Kevin on a plane back to sunny California—after almost 47 hours of AJ trawling YouTube in search of a drummer who didn’t suck and who wasn’t already in a band—Nick Scimeca sent her a text.

_Come get this drummer off my couch._

The drummer’s name was Ryan J., and he was indeed living on Nick’s couch. He didn’t flinch or squirm when Adrian looked him up and down with a critical eye. 

“Are you going to get fed up with living in a van and bail halfway through a tour?” she demanded.

“I live on Scimeca’s couch.” The whole apartment currently smelled like burnt toast, and what hair could be seen under Ryan’s beanie was dark and in dire need of a good wash.

“We wrecked our van,” she continued, flapping her arm in its sling. “Technically, it was Armor for Sleep’s fault, but they had to use the Jaws of Life to cut me out. Does that freak you out enough that you’ll want to come crying home if it happens again?”

“He falls off his own drum kit during shows,” Nick called from the computer desk where he was working on a website. Possibly—hopefully—Prototype Armada’s, because the official page hadn’t been updated since six days after _Deb’s Daisy Razor_ dropped. Honestly, the band forgot it existed most of the time. Jon liked posting his photos on Armada’s MySpace, and Greta and Bob occasionally blogged there. AJ preferred the livejournal community because she could make a post and then disable the comments. She didn’t actually want to talk to anyone so much as…just throw things into the vast void of the Interwebs and let it stew in cyberspace. Pete told her she was doing the whole Internet thing wrong on several occasions, but then again, the whole world hasn’t seen her crotch.

“One last question: you got a problem being in a band with two girls?”

“Are you jerks?”

“Greta’s not!” Scimeca yelled.

AJ chucked a throw pillow at the back of his head. It bounced off the monitor and nearly took out a mug of coffee sitting beside his keyboard. She didn’t want to know why Nick had embroidered throw pillows in the first place. “Okay,” she said, turning back to Ryan J., “You can audition.”


End file.
